August 05, 2013

A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.

It's time for the fourth golf major of the year. Remember who won ten years ago when it was last played at Oak Hill? Probably not. He'd never won a tournament. He was ranked 169 in the world. At 17, his nearest rival a playing partner (Chad Campbell) made birdie to reduce his two-shot lead to just a single stroke. At the last, he hit an approach shot with a 7-iron to two inches. If Tiger had hit that shot, you'd have seen it a couple of hundred times by now, but just in case you missed it: Shaun Micheel's approach shot to the last on Sunday in the 2003 USPGA.

It's because of complete unknowns winning the PGA Championship that this major is (possibly unfairly) the Rodney Dangerfield of sports majors.

The only surprise PGA Championship winner I can remember is John Daly, and that's because he's a real character.
(1991? 22 years ago? Wow. Now I feel old. I would have said 10 years ago, or maybe 15 at most.)

I couldn't pick out Martin Kaymer, Yang Yong-eun, Shawn Micheel, or Rich Beem out of a police lineup.

I love the PGA tournament. To me, it's the alternate universe major. As free of pomp and hushed reverence as a big tournament can be. It's late summer. The afternoon shadows are different. The time of year has a great vibe to it. Stuff happens.

I will never forget that Micheel shot (along with the Sunday pin placement) and think of it whenever I see his name in passing on a leaderboard - usually down toward the cut line or below. But it's just a pinpoint moment in the memory bank.

What I really remember fondly is Rich Beem walking the course on the final day of his win, seemingly without a care in the world. Just taking his whacks, not playing deliberately or cautiously. Just teeing it up and letting it rip, and this with Tiger making a run and closing fast, getting the announcers all lathered up.

Daly also did that during his win, just walked up to the ball and gave it a ride. He was in the zone and couldn't seem to send the ball anywhere but where it needed to go.

Then there was 2009 - the one that always feels like the first hint of the coming storm in hindsight, with Yang starting the final round at 2 behind and beating a bizarrely collapsing Tiger by 3. A few weeks later, Tiger's great personal unraveling began, and I always think back to that tournament, wondering what the true state of Tiger's mind and his world was at that moment, having previously been extraterrestrial with a 54 hole lead.

I thought it was strange how, from certain camera angles, the new Miami uniforms were terrible, almost hard to look at, while from others they seemed fine. It was worst on the high angle shots, so maybe it was a light filter or something on the lenses.

I read an interesting thing about Mickelson's cash haul in the UK in July. He won the Scottish Open and the Open Championship, netting a gross revenue of 1.445 million. 45% of that goes to HM Revenue in the UK, the state of California gets 13.3% of it, plus a 2.9% self-employment tax and a 0.9% Medicare surtax. So his net income was just over 560,000. Not terrible, obviously, but not what people think.

Shaun Micheel has done well for himself, but not $9 million in the bank well. Depending on how he's been taxed, he probably got to keep a bit more than half of that $9 million, let's call it $5m. In costs, you're probably looking at about $100K a year to play on tour (flights, hotels, car hire etc.), so call it $4 million after tax over ten years, so $400K a year net. That's doing well for yourself, but it's not buying yourself an island or anything.